Firstly, I'd like to thank Paul, Zalo and TLB for their posts. Oh and all those who posted in my defence to that fool who got in first.

Mr. Griffith: I agree, but I had sort of surrendered to the futility of that suggestion. Perhaps we'll get lucky though.
Zalo: kiss indeed. For example, I don't think the coalition need such a complicated loadout, especially not if it's immediately apparent. Perhaps if you could catagorise arms in the buy menu it'd be alright to have such a sheer bulk of guns because rather than wading through 13 weapons to find what you want you might click "Support and Reconnaissance"->"Sniper Rifle"... but even that sounds too complicated. Pistol, BR, Shotgun, Heavy Sniper, Rocket launcher? It's hard to bring down, because each large faction needs the versatility of light, medium and heavy weapons that cover most niches, but that's half the point of content design.
TLB: I understand that a lot of the less favourable changes have been made during periods of crunch, but for the most part I'd think that that would lead to such features getting culled. I've heard about how you're slowly going through the content and that's part of what triggered this. You're all good content devs. Rip out the old stuff and re-do it. It'll end up taking less time per gun, probably, and you get a fresh start. Ammo.ini per faction WHAT IS THIS BLASPHEMY!


Anyway, I thought about this a little more today.
A tidbit on why skirmish isn't fun like it is - it's not a struggle. It's a slow erosion of your base that you can't do anything about. Being underground is great and all but even then the same thing occurs. If you lose land (or space in your tunnels), 90% of the time you'll never be able to win that land back. This basically means every mistake you make brings you closer to dying (which is good) and that every good action gives you more or less no net gain (which is bad).
Note: I like punishing the player. I like getting told off for being a derp. I don't like no real reward for killing other than the enemy exploding (and his 40 friends trudging over the hill).

Also, Re: Scope and rambo-shooting - I'm not against tactical play and I don't really play CC by whizzing around the map raining fire on everyone cackling. I set up a bunker with a roof, my brain underground with 2 doors and 2-3 actors with big guns around. I snipe at the top level until my guy dies (1-3 minutes), then rage for another two while my base gets flooded with enemies because I can't get an order to the ground effectively enough. It's frustrating.

For those of you wondering what brought this about: I figured those of us that've been around for long enough and have started gaining game creation experience ourselves, or at least tinkered with RTE for some period of time that seems like forever may as well make our thoughts clear. It seems that there's at least a bit of symmetry in our thoughts so I'm glad I made the post.

So I played B23 through B25 and I noticed a drastic loss in mobility.
Its okay to nerf the jetpack, so we're not able to reach the orbit with 10 Rocketlaunchers equipped, but I found that I cant even leave the ground with a Grenade Launcher, a Shotgun and a Peacemaker equipped. I think jetpacks need a stronger startup-push, so it would work like a jump or something.

On the weapons, if I hadn't tried playing with a Revolver Cannon lately, I wouldn't have agreed, but now I totally do.
The Revolver Cannon physics are completely inconsistent now. Sometimes it just rips a dummy in half if you hit it's legs, sometimes a rail-pistol can take the entire impact of the slug and sometimes they even take a slug to the face and merely bounce back. The Heavy Sniper just bounces off doors now and hits you in the face, and if the Grenade Launcher didnt stick to the terrain of doors, it'd be absurdely powerful. And explosives remain how they were. They're no fun. In my opinion, Data should move from the Particle approach to actual impulse and force. Currently, every grenade except the molotov and incindary act like a frag grenade, so we have like, 16 or so differently powered frag grenades. Instead of merely denting stuff, they should rather throw it around. And the Flamer still doesn't do it's job and instead acts like a weak digger that doesn't dig.

I think your main problem is that there is no fundamental game in CC, if you know what I mean.

I realise you're trying to fix this with the metagame. So far I am unconvinced.

What I mean is, explosions and bullets aside, what is the point of CC? Until you come up with an answer to that question (and make a real game out of it) you're going to have massive problems.


As for balance, yes, things are massively unbalanced, but it's not (in my opinion) the biggest problem. I could perfectly balance every actor, dropship, and weapon in CC in 24 hours. It's not that difficult.

Also, yes, YOU HAVE TOO MANY WEAPONS. But that's not a big deal, like I was saying. The big deal is that there is no comprehensive vision, or at least no comprehensive vision that is good enough and appropriate to the nature of the gameplay.


I don't have a solution, and I bet you wouldn't listen to me if I did, but I what I will say is that I think it's necessary that you write down a list of every strength CC has, and use that list as a kind of design roadmap to create a 'metagame' that fits what CC is really about. Don't just say "I think 4X strategy games are cool", and decide you can fix CCs problems by giving it a world map.




P.S. Everyone should play my mod.

I think all of this stems from the fact that CC DESERVES a better developer dont get me wrong I love data just for making this game im sure its hard work and I know I dont have the skills to do it, that said, if he took a little more time on making this process as easy as possible for the other devs and for us forumites who actually play I think he would not only earn my respect (at least after a while) but also make more MONEY CC is one of the best games I have ever played and I wish that data would make it into the game it deserves to be, one based on infinite possibility. now im not saying that the campaign isnt cool (at this stage I cant tell though) but this game needs to be marketed right and needs to be updated frequently.
PS: from what ive seen this community is literally begging for more of this game and for it to be done right do you know how much EA or other companies would pay for one of their games to have this type of community that begs for more yet adds infinite content??? I mean really either get your act together or sell this to someone who will,

Nicolas X

I'm sure you meant that in the nices way possible, but people need to stop going here.

My initial impression was of being underwhelmed. Don't really have anyone who can do co-op with me. but after playing skirmish defense I'm sold. I totally get where they are trying to go, though I do agree balancing is pretty sorely needed.

It's nice that AI will actually do something other than derp, though.

I also miss the jetpacks from B23, but alas we must make do. Though seeing the grappling hook not work almost broke my poor heart, haha. Guess there's always the mod.

Overall I'm pleased with B25, I think it DOES show the devs are listening. They ARE making this game better. And I'm excited to see what the future holds. Just not holding my breath for very rapid releases.

Love that twitter feed, though.

I did mean that in the nicest way possible, just that couldnt data at least get someone to work out all of the bugs in the engine for him or get someone to do the devlog posts instead of a twitter feed,

My point was that if what is the point of this game, is it a hobby? or a real bussiness? cause if its a bussiness then its not that data has to do it on a schedule and keep his fans happy (PR) its that he SHOULD if he wants to make money. What I was also saying was that the IDEA of cortex command is worthy of better than it has been.

Nicolas X

He's made quite a few games from scratch, and they are damn good.
Your point is so awfully directed. Honestly you picked one of the worst members on this forum to bring that complaint to.


@ OP: I agree with a lot of this.
But
I just..I don't know.
It's hard to explain what I'm thinking. I agree with you standpoints, but I can't really see where you're coming from since I haven't been around as long as you have. Admittedly, I did find this game back in B17, but it wasn't until B23 that I actually gave it the light of day and played the demo. It was crazy amounts of fun, and I loved it.
But it was lacking. Content was drab, the terrain engine was awfully annoying. Every actor had the feet of an elephant on the body of a cat. They sunk. They tore grass. The physics were good, but the jetpacking was annoying, and actors shook like chipmunks with adrenaline shots implanted to their brains.
It was fun, sure. It sure as hell wasn't very well presented. I felt like Cortex Command had created a wonderful display for the school science fair, but got nervous and broke some things on accident.
There is an infinite list of problems with the current build, and every previous one.

HOWEVER.
I wouldn't say that a clean rewrite is really what we need. If Data and company were to just FIX the problems, the game would honestly complete in my eyes, sans of course features like the metagame and content updates with new stuff.
What I really want for B26? Bugfixes. Optimization. Cleansing.
Polishing. This is what the game needs. This is a fun game, it's good, it's.. just..good, though. It isn't great, when you take it into thought. As it stands Cortex Command is a fun little physics engine with guns.
Change that. Make it a fun little game with a physics engine, guns, actual gameplay.

It's at times like these that I remember DuhForum's aborted effort to redo b24's content entirely, wipe the slate clean.
To be honest, it failed because DuhForum is a bunch of thinkers and not doers, and also because we tried to go too far and wipe EVERYTHING clean (including effects and whatnot).


However, the ability to do so remains. If you wipe out the index.ini of most every .rte, save for base.rte, you can create a stripped down Cortex with just the tools and basic actors. From there it would certainly be possible to see what a leaner, meaner Cortex would be like.

I honestly can't pin down what's wrong with Cortex at this point. I vaguely agree with the points being raised in this thread, but I feel it's not really the core issue. Something about Cortex marks it a toy, still not a game, and I think it might be the lack of an overarching goal: something where you can say "I beat Cortex Command", even if that doesn't mean the end of a campaign or completing all the missions at least once. In RTS games, it's not always the campaign, and in fact I often mark my completion of the game by being able to beat the hardest AI difficulty level (or crush an easy one with the highest tier units en masse).

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Cortex needs a win condition for it's main method of play, and at the moment the endless skirmish mode is the main method of play, which by definition you cannot win. I don't know how to change that, and I don't even know if that's the "something" that's missing from Cortex.
Ramble ramble ramble

Back in the day, CC was the simple skirmish. You start it up, choose a map and difficulty, and go at it for hours and hours until it crashed from epic gibbing.

I think it started to feel, I guess, "weird", when the campaign/metagame started to be implemented and all the faction content was added. Sure, it was great to have some more stuff in a base install, and it was wonderful to have new actor types and variables, but things have always felt rushed since then.

CC used to be just skirmish. An unbeatable skirmish. I loved that. That made Cortex Command what it is. That is what we spent hours and hours playing and developing content for. Like Duh said, CC feels like it's missing something, and it is. Well, not really missing, but it has too much. It needs to go back to it's roots with the skirmish gameplay. Also, major engine overhaul.


tl;dr,
Old infinite skirmish is what defined CC, focus on skirmish mode and the engine before anything else is taken into account.


Good god I'm a 4-year ♥♥♥♥♥♥. Time goes by fast.

I agree, I started at build 14 and right around builds 17 and 18 the game started changing rapidly. When rockets started exploding and gibbed everything around them I began getting frustrated. The worst part was when THOR destroyed most of the database and I lost almost all of my older mods. There was some fantastic content spawned by the community (not that there isn't now as well). Cortex command was a fun game that I played when I was younger, now it's a game I get bored of in 5 minutes. If anyone wants to know what I am talking about, go google cortex command build 16 and download it. The detail in the gibbing was so much cleaner and brutal, now it just looks stupid to me. Anyways, I'm jaded, but that's only because I literally lost what I loved the most about Cortex Command, the older mods and the way they interacted with the old builds.

I agree with the basic sentiment of "make cortex command now, not rte".

When it was just skirmish, it was pretty clear where we were, what we're doing, what's going on, and so forth. You've got your brain, puppets, bunkers, ships, weapons, diggers, and you want to protect your brain, collect gold, and kill the other brain. From there, the community basically turned the game into a glowy laggy destructive rambo romp, but that was just secondary to the main game.
But then there were missions and factions being laid out, lots of new exciting stuff that really showed that cortex command was shaping up to be something bigger. And then some new neat stuff was added a few times. And from the twitter feed, it looks like B26 will have some really neat stuff too, which I look forward to. (breaker gl? interesting, shotgun style reloading, marvelous, and best of all, pie menus)
But the problem with the current condition of the game is that there is no core game! We've got some content, we've got an engine, and we've got some game modes, and that's working as a cluster of stuff, but once you have the central campaign up and going, you've got something to put it all in perspective to; something to follow, or something to branch out from. A series of 7 or so missions of the size of zombie cave, that are sequential, set up the story, and best of all, actually truly introduce us to all this various neat stuff we're already familiar with, might really go a long way towards giving CC some more purpose and direction.

What I don't agree with quite so much is the idea that there's a necessity to throw out the current content. Of course, that isn't to say the content should be left as is, there's room for improvement yet on mostly everything, some more than others.
What I think, on that matter, is that you should lay out your intentions. What do you want to achieve with the content? What styles, conventions, and formats will you use? Outline what you want the content to be, ignoring the content as it is. Afterward, compare it to the content as-is, and whatever is fairly close can just be modified into the ideal way you envisioned it, or if a certain thing really is just completely out of line and isn't reasonable to re-purpose to achieve any goal, then it probably really is irredeemable.

Gawd, I hope data will read this. <3 Geti.

this game needs 3 modes

Skirmish: you vs an ai bot, not as in endless waves, as in a bot that will build a base, order units and dig for gold. Also this mode could do well by having an efficient way to build buildings for gold while in game

Survival: you vs the enemy, your base in center and the enemy WALKS in from both sides, give us a kill counter for this mode

Metagame: for the civ junkies, this would be a turn based metagame where the decisions you make in the metagame greatly effect your numbers, you shouldn't be building bases in this, but capturing them, and defending them from the enemy player or bot.

I think This is what cortex command should be, although I don't like the meta game much. (doesn't fit)

I'm actually looking forward to this, I don't know if it will be cool or not, but it sounds interesting.
I think slowly taking over the whole planet gives my battles some meaning.

With luck. I'm not that fussed either way but it'd be nice to see, hey?

@azukki: I'm not saying bin the sprites or the concepts, I just feel that everything needs to be remade code wise, and some of the less versatile weapons thrown out. Arne has a cool light/medium/heavy thing going on with actors, it'd be good to see that in the guns too (1-3 of each category for the bread and butter factions). I also want to see some of the more zany factions actually getting a clear style in-game of what they do. Browncoats are hardcore elite units, they should have 3 really decent guns at their disposal, and everything should cost the world. Greenbot tutorial dummies should have exactly one of every type of weapon. AR SG GL RL + a grenade for throwing practice. Having the ronin with some wildcard weapons would be nice (triple mortar launcher with variable trajectory heavy weapon. knife mines. wooden mecha with a few iron bits). Things like that, fun design, rather than just a swathe of content that's half baked and inconsistent in it's representation (see: bullet weight thread). So that's content design.

We'll see how the whole metagame thing works out in terms of a primary game-mode, but I think AI skirmish sandbox with random terrain would be best in terms of longevity.